Sunday 28 January 2018

UFO - Mr. Men dress upgrade

I've just finished upgrading this UFO. I made this dress from a tennis dress pattern in 2004/5 (specifics are faint). The fabric came from a reclaimed bedsheet and as you can see, I was more concerned with conserving fabric than matching the print.

I love this dress but I had made the hem a little short. Luckily, in my fabric conserving spirit I had made the hem very wide. So, I was able to unpick it and lengthen the dress by a good 10cm. Unfortunately, wear on the hem had left pale lines in the print. I solved that through the application of trim (which probably cost more than the original fabric). The green trim covers the original hem line and the blue covers the fold.

If I had a do-over, I'd pattern match and maybe flare the skirt a bit more. That said, I still have the other bed sheet in the set, I could make another once my UFO stack is  down to a more manageable size. It'll have to wait though, my two UFO complete per one new project is going well and I'm looking forward to tackling some ceramics next.

Thursday 18 January 2018

Yellow bugs in Western Australia

Fuzzy yellow caterpillar photographed around Leederville, Perth.

Cleaning up images my phone and I found this critter - a Trichiocercus sparshalli. This fuzzy caterpillar turns into a white / silver moth. Apparently they can be found across Australia but the eastern states are more likely to have the red sub-species.

A bee drinking goerthite stained water - tiny tongue (proboscis)!

With water in the Pilbara being so scarce, if the local hive finds a readily available source, they all turn up for a drink. I strongly advise capping all drinks and using sippy straws to avoid the bee-in-the-mouth issue.